Bungie focused on ‘keeping players happy’ with less DLC and more free events

The December Update has officially hit Destiny and it brought a new Sparrow Racing League event. The Sparrow Racing event will be available until December 29th and it does exactly what the name suggests – lets players race against each other in Sparrow's. Bungie is planning on keeping up with events over offering DLC for players to purchase, they won't detail why, but say that it is partially because they are looking to keep players happy.

This event-based model is entirely different than Bungie's first year, where they offered a $40 DLC pass, as it will be available entirely for free.

"With Taken King, we are moving to a more event-based model–things like Festival of the Lost and Sparrow racing, which is our winter event, and then smaller events such as Iron Banner and Trials of Osiris every weekend," senior designer Derek Carroll told Eurogamer.

"Rather than doing these giant, monolithic DLC packs, this way everybody who's an owner of Taken King can enjoy these things," he added.

Bungie didn't offer any details as to why they made the change, but it could be due to the upset over The Taken King's pricing or because constantly churning out big DLC wasn't manageable for the developers. Either way, Carroll can see why players would want a definitive plan on what the developers are going to bring to the game, but asks that players understand that they will be bringing new content – even if they don't announce it.

"There's lots of different reasons as to why–I don't know how deep I can get into that," Carroll said. "But basically the live team is charged with maintaining the game and keeping players happy, feeding them new content and surprising them with things they didn't expect.

"I think by design the idea is to have these events which are surprises–so we can understand why players on the one hand want to have their lives mapped out for the next year," explained Carroll. "The way we're going is: you can expect new content from the live team in Destiny although we're not really telegraphing that. Certainly, players can expect new events and new content throughout the next year. We're taking it one step at a time."